day of the revision, had had a stuffed goose and two
bottles of good Alsace wine sent from the "Golden Sheep." He was sure
that I would be exempted at once. What was his surprise, then, to see
us enter together in such distress.

"What is the matter?" said he, raising his silk cap over his bald
forehead, and staring at us with eyes wide open.

I had not strength enough to answer. I threw myself into the arm-chair
and burst into tears. Catharine sat down beside me, and our sobs
redoubled.

Aunt Gredel said:

"The robbers have taken him."

"It is not possible!" exclaimed Monsieur Goulden, letting fall his arms
by his side.

"It shows their villainy," replied my aunt, and growing more and more
excited, she cried, "Will a revolution never come again? Shall those
wretches always be our masters?"

"Calm yourself, Mother Gredel," said Monsieur Goulden. "In the name of
Heaven don't cry so loud. Joseph, tell me how it happened. They are
surely mistaken; it cannot be otherwise. Did Monsieur the Mayor and
the hospital surgeon say nothing?"

I told the history of the letter between my sobs, and Aunt Gredel, who
until then knew nothing of it, again shrieked with her hands clinched.

"O the scoundrel! God grant that he may cross my threshold again. I
will cleave his head with my hatchet."

Monsieur Goulden was astounded.

"And you did not say that it was false. Then the story was true?"'

And as I bowed my head without replying he clasped his hands, saying:

"O youth! youth! it thinks of nothing. What folly! what folly!"

He walked around the room; then sat down to wipe his spectacles, and
Aunt Gredel exclaimed:

"Yes, but they shall not have him yet! Their wickedness shall yet go
for nothing. This very evening Joseph shall be in the mountains on the
way to Switzerland."

Monsieur Goulden hearing this, looked grave; he bent his brows, and
replied in a few moments: "It is a misfortune, a great misfortune, for
Joseph is really lame. They will yet find it out, for he cannot march
two days without falling behind and becoming sick. But you are wrong,
Mother Gredel, to speak as you do and give him bad advice."

"Bad advice!" she cried. "Then you are for having people massacred
too!"

"No," he answered; "I do not love wars, especially where a hundred
thousand men lose their lives for the glory of one. But wars of that
kind are ended. It is not now for glory and to win new kingdoms that
soldiers ar